Conservative blogger Craig Robinson argued last week that “Iowa Republicans Have Plenty of Opportunity in the State Senate” in 2010. The GOP has almost nowhere to go but up. Republicans currently hold 18 of the 50 seats in the Iowa Senate, fewer than at any previous time in this state’s history. After making gains in the last four general elections, Democrats now hold 19 of the 25 Iowa Senate seats that will be on the ballot in 2010. Also, several Democratic incumbents are in their first term, having won their seats during the wave election of 2006.

To win back the upper chamber, Republicans would need a net gain of seven seats in 2010, and Robinson lists the seven districts where he sees the best chances for the GOP.

I generally agree with John Deeth’s view that only a few Senate districts are strong pickup opportunities for Republicans next year. Winning back the upper chamber will take the GOP at least two cycles, with redistricting likely to create who knows how many open or winnable seats in 2012.

After the jump I’ll examine the seven Iowa Senate districts Robinson views as worthwhile targets as well as one Republican-held district that Democrats should be able to pick up. Here is a map (pdf file) of the current Iowa Senate districts.

I was so sorry to hear today’s news out of California. While I have no doubt that a future referendum will reverse Prop 8, that process will take years and resources that could have been spent organizing in other states.

Couples left in legal limbo should be aware that the state of Iowa recognizes the marriages of same-sex couples who tied the knot in California last year. Moving halfway across the country clearly won’t be an option for everyone, but Iowa has a low cost of living and a good quality of life (more affordable housing, relatively low rates of crime and unemployment, short commutes, and decent public schools in many communities).

Of course, couples from California or anywhere else can still come to Iowa to get married.

Since the Iowa Supreme Court’s Varnum v Brien ruling went into effect on April 27, hundreds of same-sex couples have been married here. More than half of Iowa’s 99 counties have issued at least one marriage license to a same-sex couple. Despite an extensive petition drive to pressure county recorders, no county recorder has refused to issue a marriage license to a couple seeking one.

In my opinion, a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court ruling will not get anywhere. I explain why after the jump.

The big news of the day is that President Barack Obama nominated U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. If confirmed, she would be the third woman to serve on the high court and the first Hispanic justice of either gender.

Sotomayor reportedly sealed the deal during her interview with the president last Thursday.

Deoliver47 has more background and video clips in this post.

Senate Republicans will try to drag out the confirmation process, but there will be no long-term vacancy on the high court. Justice David Souter has made clear that he will retire once his replacement is confirmed.

I don’t know a lot about Sotomayor, but I look forward to learning more. She has the qualities I wanted to see in a Supreme Court nominee, even if she is not as progressive as I would like. Tom Goldstein of the SCOTUS blog previewed arguments for and against her nomination. Excerpt:

Objectively, her qualifications are overwhelming from the perspective of ordinary Americans.  She has been a prosecutor, private litigator, trial judge, and appellate judge.  No one currently on the Court has that complete package of experience.

On the other hand, this criminal defense attorney who has argued cases before her court isn’t too impressed.

On principle, I am glad that a hit piece on Sotomayor filled with anonymous quotes did not derail her nomination. More on that hit piece is here.

Before I open the floor for comments, here’s some Supreme Court-related humor from The Onion.

What do you think of Obama’s choice?

UPDATE: Greg Sargent points out that “Seven Republicans currently in the Senate voted for the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor in 1998 as U.S. Circuit Court judge[…].” That’s not counting Arlen Specter, who also voted to confirm her in 1998 but is no longer a Republican.

SECOND UPDATE: Sports fans may remember that as a U.S. district court judge, Sotomayor ended the baseball strike in 1995.

THIRD UPDATE: Senator Chuck Grassley released this statement:

“A lifetime appointment requires a thorough vetting, and I expect Judge Sotomayor to receive fair and deliberative consideration.  The United States Senate has a responsibility to carefully review nominees to the Supreme Court.   The Judiciary Committee should take time to ensure that the nominee will be true to the Constitution and apply the law, not personal politics, feelings or preferences.  We need to ask tough questions to learn how this individual views the role of a Supreme Court justice.  The last 25 years of Senate review of nominees has been entirely different than the first 200 years, and today the Senate can’t just be a rubber stamp for President Obama’s nominees.”

Grassley is incorrect to imply that the Senate has been a rubber stamp of Supreme Court nominees for most of this country’s history. During the 19th century, the Senate rejected approximately one fourth of the presidential nominees for this office.

Here’s a list of failed nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Des Moines Register profiled Dave Murphy of Food Democracy Now in Monday’s edition. The article mentioned the incredible success of the petition signed by more than 94,000 Americans. Two of the “sustainable dozen” candidates whom Food Democracy Now recommended for U.S. Department of Agriculture posts now work for the department. Drake Law Professor Neil Hamilton, also on the sustainable dozen list, is an “informal adviser” to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

You should read the whole Des Moines Register article. The most important passage is about how Murphy makes the case for changing agriculture policies:

[Murphy] pointed to a survey from the Organic Trade Association that showed that the U.S. sales of organic food grew nearly 16 percent between 2007 and 2008 to reach $22.9 billion. Organic foods now account for about 3.5 percent of all U.S. food sales.

For Murphy, sustainable farming is about more than the food.

He sees it as returning to a model of production that is better for the environment and one in which farmers can start without taking on deep debt to finance heavy equipment.

He said the agricultural policies today are stacked against farmers of small- to mid-sized farms in favor of larger operations. […]

Murphy stressed that he isn’t against large farm operations. He said sustainable practices can help farms of all sizes.

But Murphy does believe that the playing field ought to be leveled, for the benefit not just for smaller farms but for rural areas in general.

“That’s the best way to improve rural economies,” he said. “The more farmers there are on the land, the better it is for rural economies.”

Health and environmental concerns sparked my interest in buying local food produced sustainably, but Murphy is wise to connect the dots between agriculture policies and the economic future of rural areas. For more along those lines, read the feature on Murphy and Food Democracy Now from the Washington Post in March.

Speaking of Iowans who are incredibly committed to helping small and medium-sized farms thrive, Woodbury County’s rural economic development director Rob Marqusee has pledged to “eat only food grown within 100 miles of the Woodbury County Courthouse for the entire month of June 09 (and no meat will be allowed in the diet).” Keep an eye on Marqusee’s Woodbury Organics site next month, because he’ll be blogging about his food challenge.

Those interested in Murphy’s work should go read more on the Food Democracy Now site. Click here for past Bleeding Heartland posts that referenced Food Democracy Now’s work. Jill Richardson wrote more here about Murphy’s activist roots and the role he played during the Iowa caucus campaign.

If organic farmer Francis Thicke decides to run for Iowa secretary of agriculture in 2010, expanding local food networks will be a major theme of his campaign.

I got so busy this month that the event calendars fell by the wayside. After the jump I’ve posted details about lots of things going on this week and next.

As always, please post a comment or send an e-mail (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com) if you know of something I’ve left out.

Congratulations to all the recent college graduates in the Bleeding Heartland community. I hope you’ve grown and learned as much as I did in college, and I hope you don’t stop growing and learning once you’re out of school.

Reading this Des Moines Register collection of excerpts from commencement addresses, I realized that I don’t remember a single thing the speaker said during my own graduation ceremony. While searching for something else, I came across John Lithgow’s speech to the 2005 graduating class at Harvard. I highly recommend it.

Lithgow includes everything you want in a speech like this: humor (but not too much), social commentary (but not too much), and personal anecdotes that reflect his advice to the graduates (“be creative, be useful, be practical, and be generous”).

Instead of telling the audience how he achieved fame and success as an actor, Lithgow explained how he used his acting career to launch a “concurrent second career” as a children’s entertainer with a “secret agenda” to instill a love for the Arts in young people. Do click through–it’s a good read.

Share your own words of wisdom for new graduates in this thread.

The Des Moines Register’s Clark Kauffman wrote a must-read piece for today’s paper about a bunkhouse for mentally disabled men at the Johnson & Johnson Egg Farm near Goldthwaite, Texas. The bunkhouse is

the last run by the same Texas family who controlled Henry’s Turkey Service and the Atalissa, Ia., bunkhouse from which dozens of mentally retarded turkey plant workers were evacuated by the fire marshal in February.

Click here for the full archive of Des Moines Register stories about Henry’s Turkey Service and its facility in Iowa. The exploitation of workers there over many years is the subject of numerous current investigations. The horrific story had political fallout as well. Iowa Senate Republicans rejected Gene Gessow’s nomination to head the Department of Human Services, saying that as acting head of the department, Gessow “failed to be forthright about the Atalissa bunkhouse situation during important legislative oversight committee hearings.”

I’ve highlighted a few parts of Kauffman’s latest report after the jump, but I encourage you to click over and read the whole piece. Then ask yourself why any companies are allowed to pay the mentally disabled less than minimum wage. If a person is competent to do work a corporation needs done, that person deserves the same pay a person with no disabilities would receive.

Richard Doak wrote a great piece in last Sunday’s Des Moines Register urging readers to “plant the seeds of a more eco-thoughtful Iowa.” Seeding native plants along roadsides has helped the state Department of Transportation save money and labor while user fewer chemicals.

Highway officials cite a long list of other benefits, such as controlling blowing snow, improving air quality, reducing erosion, filtering pollutants and providing wildlife habitat. They’re even said to improve safety by reducing the effects of highway hypnosis, delineating upcoming curves and screening headlight glare.

Doak wants to see much more native landscaping in Iowa:

To set the example, let’s have every school, every courthouse, every park, every hospital, every library set aside at least a patch of space for wild indigo, prairie sage, golden Alexanders, blackeyed Susan, pale-purple coneflower, butterfly milkweed, prairie larkspur, shooting star, compass plant, partridge pea, spiderwort, ironweed, blazing star, smooth blue aster or any of hundreds of other flowering plants that were native to the tallgrass prairie. […]

It’s estimated that up to one-third of residential water use goes to lawn watering, and lawn mowing uses 800 million gallons of gasoline per year, including 17 million gallons spilled while refueling. Some 5 percent of air pollution is attributed to lawn mowers.

Native plants require no fertilizer or herbicide, no watering and only enough mowing to mimic the effects of the occasional wildfires that kept the prairie clean of trees.

Interest in reducing pollution and conserving water and energy should be reason enough to switch to native landscaping.

About ten years ago, our family stopped trying to grow a grassy lawn in our shady yard. After the jump I’ve listed some of the benefits of going native.

I got my first mosquito bite of the year yesterday, so I knew it was time to get out the bug spray and post a new version of this diary.

Unfortunately, many public health authorities still recommend using insect repellents containing DEET. Having researched this issue a few years ago after my older son was born, I would not recommend DEET for anyone, especially children or adults living in a household with children.

The Environmental Protection Agency does not permit DEET products to be labeled “child safe” and requires labels directing parents not to allow children to handle the product. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Environmental Protection Agency both recommend precautions when applying DEET to children, such as washing skin treated with DEET as well as treated clothing when children return inside. Few families find it practical to bathe their children and wash their clothing every time they come in from outside during the summer.

Kids Health for Parents, a web site published by the Nemours Foundation, recommends that repellents containing DEET be used “sparingly” on children between the ages of 2 and 12 and not put on their faces or hands, because children so frequently put their hands in their mouths.

The Lyme Disease Foundation has this advice for keeping ticks away: “On skin, use a repellent containing DEET. But don’t overdo it. Too much bug spray can cause breathing difficulty, especially in children.”

In any event, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has found that “repellents containing the ingredient picaridin or the oil of lemon eucalyptus can protect people against mosquitoes as well as repellents containing the chemical DEET.”

Grist reviewed several DEET-free alternatives last summer. The Daily Green listed a few more DEET-free insect repellents here.

I’ve tried several of the products mentioned in those pieces. We mostly use Buzz Away, but other DEET-free brands seem to work well too. The main difference between them and DEET is that you have to reapply the natural repellents more frequently, about every one to two hours. Usually that’s no problem for me, because I only need it when I walk the dog or take the kids to the park for an hour or two.

Share your tips for beating the mosquitoes in this thread.

UPDATE: I got an e-mail from an avid gardener who swears by generic-brand listerine in a spray bottle. Reapply every hour or two, she says.

SECOND UPDATE: At Mother Talkers, Jenniferfree2bme posted a great tip about home-made spray using catnip oil.

Last month I was on the receiving end of a push-poll/fundraising call from Newt Gingrich’s organization, American Solutions. Mark Blumenthal of Pollster.com read my post and said it “sounds like a clear cut example of fundraising under the guise of a survey (‘FRUGGing’)”. The Marketing Research Association considers FRUGGing unethical, because

The use of a poll to conduct fund raising has raised the distrust of the public to a point where they refuse to cooperate with researchers trying to obtain the opinions of any number of issues, including political campaign, and government: federal, state and local research. In a country inundated with telemarketing and direct mail fund raising it is more and more difficult for marketing and opinion researchers to get accurate data.

Although I declined to give Newt’s group any money, I must look like a sucker for conservative groups peddling fake surveys. On Wednesday, May 20, the phone rang around 8:25 pm and the caller asked for me by name. She worked for Infocision (the same company that made the calls for Gingrich’s group), and she asked whether I would participate in a brief survey for David Bossie’s group Citizens United.

As I always do when I receive any political call, I grabbed a pen and paper to take notes. More details are after the jump. You be the judge of whether Bossie’s group is also FRUGGing.

Over at The Iowa Republican, Craig Robinson reports that Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey

has recently employed Tim Moran and Marcus Branstad to work on his behalf. […]

Both Moran and Branstad were sought after during the Iowa caucuses. Branstad worked briefly for Sen. Bill Frist before joining Mitt Romney’s Iowa staff. After the caucuses, Branstad worked on Congressman Tom Latham’s re-election campaign. Moran cut his teeth on the 2002 Vander Plaats campaign and also worked on Romney’s Iowa campaign. He then went to work for Congressman Steve King’s campaign before joining King’s congressional staff. […]

In Moran, Northey has a political operative who has spent most of his political career working western Iowa. Having worked for both Vander Plaats and King makes Moran a valuable asset to any campaign, but especially to a statewide gubernatorial campaign. It would be difficult to find a better person to organize western Iowa for a campaign.

Branstad, the youngest son of former Governor Terry Branstad, has spent most of his time organizing north central Iowa for Mitt Romney and Congressman Tom Latham. Marcus is a talented organizer with a great last name, and even if his last name was Smith, he would still be one of the best organizers in central Iowa.

Robinson speculates that “Either Secretary Northey is about to run the most extensive and expensive Secretary of Agriculture re-election campaign in Iowa’s history, or he is exploring a run for governor.”

Although I think Northey would be an underdog in both a Republican gubernatorial primary and a general election matchup with Chet Culver, hiring quality staff makes sense. He’s got enough money in the bank to pay their salaries. He now knows no other candidate for governor can hire Moran and Branstad. They can work on building up Northey’s name recognition and support around the state. If Culver’s poll numbers continue to slip this year, Northey can jump in to the governor’s race without having to spend time searching for key staffers.

If Culver bounces back up in the polls like he did last year after a shaky few months, Northey can always run for re-election as secretary of agriculture, which is the direction he claims to be leaning.

UPDATE: Dave Price of WHO-TV reports that Jeff Lamberti, a businessman and former state senator from Ankeny, is thinking about running for governor and will decide by this fall at the latest. Lamberti retired from the state senate in order to run against Congressman Leonard Boswell in 2006.  

Members of Bruce Braley’s Populist Caucus were among 55 House members who took a stand against the Panama Free Trade Agreement today in an open letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

After the jump I’ve posted the full text of the letter, along with the list of those who signed. Here is an excerpt:

We believe trade agreements must meet basic standards protecting labor rights, environmental standards, food safety regulations, financial regulations, and taxation transparency. We are disturbed by Panama’s tax haven status and the use of this tax haven by U.S. financial institutions like AIG and Citibank. The U.S. is currently contemplating stricter financial regulations to protect our economy, but the Panama FTA will likely weaken any such effort. We believe the Panama FTA should be renegotiated in order to address these outstanding issues.

President Obama campaigned effectively on changing the trade model and his message resonated with the American people.  We believe the Panama FTA falls far short of that commitment and it is not in the best interests of the American worker, our economy, or our country.  We share your commitment to fighting for working families and believe you can be an effective advocate for our cause.

The House members who signed the letter mostly belong to the Populist Caucus, House Trade Working Group, and/or the Progressive Caucus. I noticed that Representative Dave Loebsack (IA-02) joined Braley (IA-01) among the 17 Populist Caucus members who signed. Representative Leonard Boswell (IA-03) was among six Populist Caucus members who did not sign. One Republican signed: Walter Jones (NC-03).

“Defending American competitiveness by fighting for fair trade principles” is one of the six key priorities for the Populist Caucus.

Later today, a U.S. Trade Representative announced that the Panama agreement “won’t be submitted to Congress for approval until President Barack Obama offers a new ‘framework’ for trade.” At Open left, David Sirota interpreted that announcement as a victory (albeit possibly only temporary) for the Populist Caucus, its allies and the AFL-CIO, which had already come out against the Panama agreement.

We’ll see whether the White House is willing to deviate significantly from the NAFTA model in this agreement. Whatever the final outcome, I am glad to see a large House contingent taking a stand for fair trade.

I still hope the Populist Caucus will get more involved in the health care debate.

I just saw this on Charlotte Eby’s Twitter feed:

Chuck Larson tells me he’s not jumping into governor’s race. Cites his two young children as the reason.

Larson is an attorney from Cedar Rapids who was elected to the Iowa Senate in 2002. During his term he did a 12-month tour in Iraq as a military lawyer. Although Larson retired from the Iowa Senate in 2006, many people believed he harbored higher political ambitions, because he founded a pro-Iraq War group called Families United. In late 2007 President Bush named Larson U.S. ambassador to Latvia.

I respect people who put family considerations before career. That said, Larson’s statement is another sign that Republicans are not jumping at the chance to take on Governor Chet Culver. Having young children doesn’t often deter politicians from seeking office when a promising opportunity comes up, as it did for Terry Branstad in 1982 and Culver in 2006.  

Looking at this graph of party identification by age in the U.S., I was not surprised to find 40-year-olds like me in the best cohort for Republicans. My peers vaguely remember the oil shocks and high inflation of the 1970s, and then came of age during Ronald Reagan’s “morning in America.” In those days, many young people proudly identified with the Republican Party. As they grew older, lots of them continued to vote that way.

Americans who were growing up during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are much more likely to call themselves Democrats or independents than Republicans. They also voted Democratic by large margins in the 2006 and 2008 general elections. If Republicans can’t figure out a way to compete with this group of voters, Democrats will have a built-in advantage for decades.

Fixing this problem won’t be easy for the GOP and may even be impossible, for reasons I discuss after the jump.

Nearly every day I see reports on this or that program in Iowa receiving additional funding thank to the federal economic stimulus bill, passed in February over loud Republican objections. This news caught my eye on Monday. Iowa will receive about $7.5 million out of $100 million appropriated to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Lead-Based Paint Hazard Control Program:

Polk County will receive $3 million to eliminate lead in 206 housing units; Marshalltown will get nearly $2.6 million to remove lead from 150 housing units; and Sioux City will be awarded nearly $2 million to create 75 lead-safe housing units.

Two potential Republican candidates for governor next year happen to be from Sioux City: businessman Bob Vander Plaats and State Representative Chris Rants. I know some conservatives are clueless about the dangers posed by lead paint, but I wonder if Rants and Vander Plaats can see the benefit of creating lead-safe housing.

Background: lead poisoning can cause mental retardation and behavioral problems, and not only in children. “Exposure to excessive amounts of inorganic lead during the toddler years may produce lasting adverse effects upon brain function.” Decades later, people poisoned by lead can show signs of cognitive deficits and mental illness. People exposed to high levels of lead in the womb and in early childhood have cells missing in key areas of the brain and have been found to be “more likely to be arrested for crimes, especially violent crimes.”

If Republicans claim they support lead remediation but don’t think it belongs in an economic stimulus bill, remember that lead remediation requires human labor and therefore creates jobs. I also would like Republicans to explain where they would find the money for this important work, since Republican politicians want deep spending cuts at the state level as well as a federal spending freeze.

I’m glad to learn that more funding to get lead out of homes was included in the stimulus bill. Reducing children’s exposure to lead has long been a priority for Barack Obama.

The Iowa Department of Public Health’s Bureau of Lead Poisoning Prevention has more background on lead poisoning in Iowa.

Last week the Iowa Senate Ethics Committee voted unanimously to dismiss Ed and Lynn Fallon’s complaint against State Senator Merlin Bartz, who used his official  website to promote this petition last month. The petition sought to pressure Iowa’s county recorders to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The Fallons contended that Bartz failed to comply with the Senate Code of Ethics, which requires legislators to “encourage respect for the law.” They also questioned whether taxpayer money was used to support the website where Bartz promoted the petition drive and urged volunteers to send copies of their signature lists to the Iowa Family Policy Center.

The Senate Ethics Committee concluded after a few minutes’ discussion that Bartz was exercising his free speech rights.

On May 18, I’M for Iowa released a statement depicting the hearing as a “sham.” Contrary to the Iowa Senate Code of Ethics, the Senate Ethics Committee failed to inform the Fallons of the date and time of the hearing in advance. The committee also did not consider the specific questions raised in the Fallons’ complaint. I’ve posted I’M for Iowa’s statement after the jump.

It seems clear that two political realities derailed any serious inquiry into the complaint against Bartz. First, Bartz is an insider, and the complainants are outsiders. (Heck, Ed Fallon was an outsider even when he was serving in the state legislature.) Earlier this year, the Iowa House Ethics Committee dismissed with prejudice a complaint Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement filed against State Representative Dolores Mertz without seriously considering many of the issues raised by the group.

I would put very low odds on any ethics complaint filed by any citizen action group leading to disciplinary action against a state representative or senator. (Please correct me if you know of any counter-examples.)

Second, I suspect that Senate Democrats have no interest in making a martyr out of Bartz. Opponents of marriage equality are desperate to show that their rights are threatened by same-sex marriages. We don’t need Bartz to be purportedly “punished for speaking his mind” (even though that wasn’t the point of the Fallons’ complaint). Look what the National Organization for Marriage has done to make Miss California USA seem like a victim of “gay marriage activists”.

Bartz hasn’t prevented any same-sex marriages from taking place, but he has secured a reputation as the most aggressive defender of “traditional marriage” in the Iowa Senate Republican caucus. He has also helped the Iowa Family Policy Center generate lots of new leads for their next membership drive.

I’ll be interested to see whether Senate Republicans seek to replace their current leader, Paul McKinley, with Bartz next year. McKinley’s actions on the marriage front have been found wanting by some Iowa conservatives and anti-gay activists.

Who’s a Culver-skeptic now?

State Auditor David Vaudt announced today that he won’t run for Iowa governor in 2010. It’s bad news for Republicans who were hoping to recruit a candidate known for expertise on fiscal matters.

More details and analysis are after the jump.

House Republican leader John Boehner was on CNN Sunday morning:

“We’ve got the greatest health care delivery system in the world,” he added. “Why do we want to jeopardize that with a big government run health care system?”

Because our health care delivery system directs about 31 percent of total health spending to administrative costs.

Because our health care delivery system makes Americans more likely to go without certain medical procedures despite astronomical per capita spending on health care.

Because our health care delivery system leads to overuse of emergency rooms by insured as well as uninsured Americans.

Because our health care delivery system leaves uninsured trauma patients 50 percent more likely to die than trauma patients covered by insurance.

Because our health care delivery system causes uninsured people to be denied organ transplants on the grounds that they will lack the capacity to pay for anti-rejection medications.

Because our health care delivery system prompts insured as well as uninsured Americans to delay medical treatment for chronic illnesses.

Because our health care delivery system makes uninsured people much more likely than insured people to be diagnosed with “advanced cancers […] that could have been detected early through proper screening.”

Because our health care delivery system puts paperwork from insurance companies rather than a doctor’s recommendation in charge of the timetable for cancer surgery.

Because our health care delivery system can force cancer patients to forgo radiation or chemotherapy if they lose their insurance.

Because our health care delivery system can leave insured as well as uninsured people with crushing debts after completing cancer treatment or care for a medical emergency.

Feel free to add your own answers in the comments.

UPDATE: MyDD user Trey Rentz adds that medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the U.S.

Water quality has long been one of Iowa’s biggest environmental problems. Fortunately, the state plans to spend some $455 million cleaning up Iowa rivers and lakes, according to an excellent piece by Perry Beeman in the May 10 edition of the Des Moines Register:

After decades of struggling to address serious pollution problems, the state now has an unprecedented pool of state and federal money to solve some of its worst water-quality problems, said Charles Corell, the water chief of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

One of the biggest impacts: improved sewage treatment and septic systems in the 500 towns and rural subdivisions that don’t have any. […]

Much of the new money for water quality was approved last month by the Iowa Legislature as part of a huge bond package pushed by Gov. Chet Culver. Other money was awarded as part of flood recovery efforts.

Money for lake restorations – including popular spots like Clear Lake in Cerro Gordo County and Carter Lake in Pottawattamie County – will more than quadruple. Many predict the much larger pool will fuel recreation opportunities and improve local economies. […]

“You essentially have untreated or under-treated sewage getting into waterways,” said Corell, who visited Truesdale and Greenville on Thursday to discuss proposed sewer projects. “And it’s all the time, not just when it rains.”

After the jump I have posted details Beeman compiled about the new money that will be used to improve water quality in Iowa. A large sum came from the federal economic stimulus bill, which didn’t get a single Republican vote in the House of Representatives. Another major source is the I-JOBS bonding initiative, which passed the Iowa House and Senate last month with no Republican votes.

Republicans keep bashing the federal stimulus spending and the state-level borrowing, as if no Iowans will benefit from these policies (aside from the few thousand people who will work on the projects). One typical example was the e-mail blast Iowa Senate Republican leader Paul McKinley sent out last week. You won’t find it on the comically awful Iowa Senate Republicans website, which appears not to have been updated since April 16. However, I receive “McKinley’s Memos” via e-mail, and I’ve posted the May 15 edition after the jump to give you a flavor of current Republican ideology.

I addressed most of the points McKinley raises in this post. The Party of No’s indiscriminate stance against borrowing fails to recognize that when interest rates are relatively low, bonding to pay for worthwhile projects is a wise investment. It may be hard to assign a dollar value to reducing water pollution in Iowa, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important for human health, biodiversity and local economies.

Hundreds of thousands of Iowans will benefit from the clean water projects discussed in Beeman’s article. If Republicans had their way, the sewer improvements and lake cleanups wouldn’t happen for years, if ever.

Please share your own thoughts about penny-wise and pound-foolish conservative dogma in this thread.

The Des Moines Register reported an FBI informant and undercover police officer infiltrated a peace organization at the University of Iowa prior to the RNC convention in August 2008.  It is reported that that surveillence began as early as the fall of 2007.

Confidential FBI documents obtained by The Des Moines Register show an FBI informant was planted among a group described as an “anarchist collective” that met regularly last year in Iowa City. One of the group’s goals was to organize street blockades to disrupt the Republican convention, held Sept. 1-4, 2008, where U.S. Sen. John McCain was nominated for president.

The undercover Minnesota deputy who traveled to Iowa City was from the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department, which infiltrated a group known as the “RNC Welcoming Committee” that was coordinating convention protest activities in St. Paul.

The undercover officer accompanied two activists from the Twin Cities who attended the University of Iowa in April 2008 for a Midwest campus anti-war conference.

The Iowa City Police Department was not aware that an FBI informant was monitoring local anti-war activists last year, Police Chief Samuel Hargadine said. But he confirmed to the Register that he was notified by Ramsey County authorities last year that they were sending an undercover officer to Iowa City.

Read the entire story for more details.  

It is pretty amazing national security resources would go to monitor a peace group in Iowa.  As one of the people in Iowa said, “There are not a lot of bomb throwers in Iowa City.”